Wednesday, July 19, 2006

The Latest Cut and Run Adherent: Unreliapundit

I've been continuing my global warming "debate" with Unreliapundit over at the inappropriately named blog, "The Astute Blogger". I put "debate" in quotes since it's basically me pummeling him continuously with little resistance.

I think he's deleted my latest response 5 times now. It never ceases to amaze me how craven some of the war hawks can be. Here's a guy that calls for all out war on a daily basis, but is terrified by someone posting dangerous ideas on his blog. He's the first to turn tail and run when the going gets a little tough. If he thought his arguments were better, he'd be more than happy to leave mine up. It's only when he knows that he's beaten that he must delete posts. I guess I should be appreciative; he proves me right with every delete that he must issue and every thread he has to close off to opposing views. Here's the post that he keeps deleting because it's impossible for him to argue against:

"charcoal is not a proxy for fire-info; it is a direct result of fires."Proxy data, is, by definition, data that measures the cause and relationship of two things indirectly. Like presence of oxygen with occurrence of wildfires being measured through the record of charcoal or the measurement of CO2 and temperature through ice cores. Below, we'll see how you are again relying on proxy data within a cite without realizing it.

"there is ample evidence that the proxies used to generate the info for the hockey-stick are not reliable. google it yourself."Perhaps you're referring to some of the common misconceptions about the "hockey-stick" addressed in this article. If not, please actually name your objections to the model.

"co2 is variable, and not global. google it yourself""Variable, and not global." That doesn't even make sense. Did you mean globally variable? I'm not even sure what point you're trying to address here.

"i find it BIZARRE that folks like you who must accept that the left was wrong about just about everything, believes them on this."Once again, you prove beyond the shadow of a doubt you arrived at your conclusions about global warming by reasoning backwards, not from reviewing scientific data. You don't like the solutions to global warming that the politicians on the left are pursuing, so you reason backwards that global warming must not exist. News flash -- global warming is not a political issue; it is a scientific one. I haven't arrived at my conclusions by listening to the left. I arrived at them by reviewing the science. Of course, when I've shown how you've been wrong in your interpretation of just about every scientific study, your response has been to ignore that you were wrong and move onto the next argument.

"when only 30 years ago they were hysterical about gloabl cooling."This is a vast overstatement. The number of scientists that ever supported the idea of modern global cooling was nothing compared to the virtual consensus. From the article, "It is occasionally asserted that "in the 1970's, all scientists believed in global cooling" and therefore we should not believe in global warming now. However the scientific literature does not support this (see below); there is limited support from the popular press."

Also, you continue to ignore the 3 out of the 4 points in my last post. The string of unanswered challenges remains unbroken.

You've actually provided a good link with good science this time. Bravo. This is much better than when you try to draw your own conclusions on articles you don't understand like this original post or the Amazon "old trees" post.

The first thing that I note about this study is that it includes ... proxy data. From the study's introduction, "When reconstructing past climatic conditions from the ever increasing archives of natural proxies, itc is essential to establish rigorous statistical relationships between the proxy data and modern climatic observations." I guess you just can't stop citing things that rely on proxy data.

The only problem with this study as a predictor/indicator of global warming is that it doesn't control for the North Atlantic Oscillation and the variability it causes, like say, this study.

As it says, "Using this region as an indicator of Greenland's temperature change that is related to global warming, we find that the ratio of the Greenland to global temperature change due to global warming is 2.2 in broad agreement with GCM predictions." You'll note that the Vinther paper cited in the article you point to understands the relevance of this and thus makes no proclamations about the relevance of their data to global warming.

I see you deleted my post (here it is again) and merely reprinted (without permission, I assume) the entire contents of the article you linked to. Yes, I already responded to that exactly. Of course, it's hard to tell when you cowardly delete my posts. Still no responses to any of my points though. Huge surprise, there.

I see that you're confusing the scientific, peer-reviewed paper by Vinther, et. al. with the unexamined ramblings of the writers of the article you linked to. If you go read the actual study produced by Vinther, NONE of their "What it Means" section is there. That's all post-fabrication. The reason is that Vinther knows about the North Atlantic Oscillation and the variability it causes. He has written entire papers on that. Therefore, this survey data is not valid for global warming analysis. Only a study that takes this into account would be good for that type of analysis. Did I already happen to provide one of those. Yes, I did. Does it show what I say it does? Yes it does. Is this clear to you? I seriously doubt it. Will you delete this post because you embrace cutting and running and cannot stand to be questioned? Signs point to "yes."

If you truly thought your argument was better, then you'd leave mine up. When you keep deleting it, you just prove me right again (and again and again).

So, I keep posting the direct answer to your article, and you keep simply repeating what the article says, deleting my response, and pretending that it doesn't exist. Look at the study. Are any of those conclusions there? Of course not. Because the scientists that did the study didn't draw those conclusions. They understand why the study I cited is usable as the "canary" and why yours is not.

The concensus is manufactured by ignoring those who disagree. It is also hard for those who disagree to get funding.

Look at the proxies in the above link.

BTW the greatest greenhouse gas is H2O.

Man made CO2 amounts to about 5% of natural production. In addition a doubling of CO2 produces less than a doubling of its effect. Then there is effect saturation. The point where additional CO2 has no effect on heat trapping.

In any case thequestion is political. Do we solve the problem by growing the global economy so more people live and live well? Or do we cut back severely on energy useage and cause a die off. Such a plan even if you could get it agreed to could not be implimented without very severe wars. That to your liking?

That's funny. Your link above is what started all of this. In case you missed it, before Unreliapundit deleted all those posts, the Petition Project is:

a) 8 years old, back when there was still a lot of open questions about global warming, especially the atmospheric temperature data

b) all based on push-polling citing as evidence an unpublished and unreviewed paper designed to look like the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

c) conceded by one of the organizers to be unverifiable regarding the actual number of valid signatures

d) shown by a sampling to vastly overstate the current level of support

I believe that I have answered all of the "proxies" from your 8-year old study link in other threads and comments, If there are any in particular you'd like to highlight, I'd be more than happy to address them again.

Onto your direct points:

The concensus is manufactured by ignoring those who disagree. It is also hard for those who disagree to get funding.Untrue on several levels. First, with a Republican administration and Congress, who do you think has been controlling most of the study grants for the past 5 1/2 years? And what is their position on global warming? If there were any climate scientist of any repute that proposed a study designed to disprove global warming, he would have no problem getting a grant from the US government. Or, he certainly could have turned to the wealthy Global Climate Coalition for funding. Additionally, those who disagree are not ignored. They were invited to present their side at the IPCC, and they get a lot more than their share of media coverage, based on their numbers and scientific output.

BTW the greatest greenhouse gas is H2O.True, but irrelevant. If the concentration of H20 is remaining constant and that of CO2 is rising, what effect do you think that will have and why? This should be an obvious answer. Here's a link to further explain about dependent variables.

Man made CO2 amounts to about 5% of natural production. In addition a doubling of CO2 produces less than a doubling of its effect.Also, true, but not relevant. Before the industrial revolution, the system was relatively balanced, with the same amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere and coming back out. When you change one side of the equation by 5% a year, it's like paying interest on a bank account -- the balance just keeps going up. Take a look at the graphs of CO2 in the atmosphere. The difference over past variations is as obvious as the warming trend has been.

Then there is effect saturation. The point where additional CO2 has no effect on heat trapping.I am very interested in this assertion. Your link above does not contain the word saturation anywhere, so I was wondering what you're basing this on.

In any case the question is political. Do we solve the problem by growing the global economy so more people live and live well? Or do we cut back severely on energy useage and cause a die off. Such a plan even if you could get it agreed to could not be implimented without very severe wars. That to your liking?

You assume, as Unreliapundit does, that I am a supporter of the Kyoto Protocol or something even more restrictive. I am not, largely for the reasons you cite. It is politically unviable, globally repressive, and easily cheated upon. What I would actually like is for everyone to get on the same page, admit that there is a problem, and figure out the best way to solve it. If I'm right, "growing the economy" doesn't seem like much of a solution, but targeted scientific research might be. However, the more time we take to investigate and solve the problem now, the fewer drastic measures we're likely to have to take in the future. Denying the scientific evidence that man-made global warming is happening is simply stupid and short-sighted. Is that to your liking?

While there are a lot of potential solutions to this problem, we're never going to get to explore many of them unless we get on the stick and have a viable discussion about them. Religious idiots like Unreliapundit stand in the way of that discussion by attacking the essentially settled science. That's what I'm fighting against. We're not yet past step 1. We have to acknowledge the problem first.